How wonderful to see Olivia Colman winning the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Anne in The Favourite. Perhaps the PC brigade would prefer us not to have male/female awards anymore, but I think it’s great that we do! It was also amazing to see Ruth E Carter as the first black person to win an award for costume design.

Just touching on the Oscars, last Monday David Wigg was my guest on Faversham Natters and we spoke about his experiences as a reporter with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but most significantly (as it was the day after the Oscars) about his friend of many years, Freddie Mercury. He thought Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie was great!

Another good…

We may be close to actually knowing, roughly, what Brexit means. In fairness, any Prime Minister would have found Brexit a nightmare. The country used to split into two with people on the left and people on the right, but at the moment that water is muddied by leavers and remainers from both sides. The country at large doesn’t fully understand the enormous value the City of London has on us all of and what its taxes contribute to our wellbeing. So, it was great to read that the UK has struck a deal with the US to ensure the continuity of derivative trading after Brexit. A deal whatever the outcome of Brexit is a good deal! I don’t pretend to understand it all, but I do understand how important a deal like this is to our economy, as it means jobs across the whole country.

The Bad

Jon Lansman, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn and founder of the left-wing group, Momentum, has admitted that the “hardcore anti-Semitic” view is larger than they thought. Bunkum. They chose to ignore it, even encouraged it and have been caught out. I’m not a socialist, but had huge respect for Hugh Gaitskell and John Smith, both of whom made the Labour Party electable. Their untimely deaths when Number Ten beckoned was a blow for the country as well as the millions of decent centre-left socialists in this country. Corbyn, and MacDonnell, are a disgrace to this country and ordinary decent socialists.

Another bad…

One in ten adults over 40 probably have type 2 diabetes which is probably caused by being overweight or obese. Now I know I’m slightly overweight and my BMI is 28, but that’s not what overweight means in this context, and my blood sugar was all fine at my annual medical last year. I probably do drink too much beer and eat too much steak, but I’m about to hit 70 and still ride my bike and play cricket. OK, not like I once did, I can’t throw a ball flat and hard from the boundary straight over the stumps anymore, but it looks as if I do enough to stay the right side of the line! So, it doesn’t take much. I take stairs not lifts when I can, in fact, I walk from A to B. Three brisk(ish) ten-minute walks in a day is better than the 10,000 steps people have become obsessed with. That happens just by living a normal life!

The Mad

Submariners are getting too fat! And pilots are as well by the look of it! Submarine escape hatches may have to be made bigger and the ejector seats in fighter planes are having to be modified. Lord McColl, a former professor of surgery told the House of Lords, “By far and away the most serious eating disorder is the obesity epidemic.” I know international rugby players are on average 3 stone heavier than they were in 1955, but I don’t think that’s fat!

And finally…

Drugs are bad, full stop. Drugs in sport is cheating, full stop. But why would you take drugs to play Bridge? The cynic might say to stay awake, but I don’t buy that! The world’s number one Bridge player has tested positive for drugs and been suspended! Geir Helgemo, who is Norwegian but plays international Bridge for Monaco, said they were not performance enhancing. So, what were they? Well, they were synthetic testosterone and a female fertility drug. Too many questions at once spring to mind including why in a non-gender divided sport such drugs are tested for? Madness.

Films come to mind; Spencer Tracey’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and that great Second World War film about Arnhem… A Bridge Too Far!